Flintlocks - "FLINT" And "Steel"

The world is 'FULL OF IT' - that is both literally and figuratively speaking ... our planet's crust is around 25 percent SILICON - which is what FLINT is mostly made of - and it is laying about all over the place as Chert / Quartz /  Flint / Sand etc. 

'GRIMES GRAVES' Prehistoric FLINT MINES In Norfolk UK:

Bic lighters are so brilliantly designed & useful because of the way their flints strike a flame every time eh ..

WRONG .. there ain't no flint in the 'flints' in a Bic Lighter. - It's "Ferrocerium" approx. 50% cerium, 25% lanthanum and 20% iron; the remaining 5% is magnesium, neodymium and praseodymium ..

- Like I started to say- we are fed so much bullshit by salespersons, adverts, public relations, priests, vicars and POLITICIANS that naturally some of us get confused about reality. - Funny thing that .. as homo sapiens sapiens means WISE WISE MAN ..

Back to basics - in the jolly old STONE-AGE our antecedents noticed that they could generate sparks by bashing together one kind of hard shiny rock against a different sort of hard rock with maybe bits of rusty iron in it .. when busy shaping rocks. Yup they didn't need a licence or planning permission to look after themselves back then.

FIRE lead to cooking .. that led to social change whereby one un-named gender became ever more central to existance and comfort for the rest of us, by looking after us in more ways than ever imagined. - It's worth thinking about now & then .. that we ALL were born of a binary woman who was our mother eh.

The Stone-Age - moving forward became 'Bronze-Age' then the 'IRON-AGE' and women noticed that if they took an old flint tool and scraped it against one of those new iron tools they got lovely strong sparks that reliably ignited nice dry tinder ... and woman-sapiens-sapiens never looked to a man ever again to help her cook the family dinner. - Just to confuse (the weaker, less sapiens) male sex, they called it FLINT & STEEL and in due course developed HIGH CARBON STEEL FRIZZENS for their flintlock guns ... 

But it's worth noting that some Florida joker Russ Hamm in the 1970's developed the idea of facing your frizzens with sheets of DEPLETED URANIUM which is not a brilliant idea - as long as you breath.

Depleted Uranium is so PYROPHORIC that it produces wonderful rich hot sparks when impacting steel or flint - which is why, as a D.U. projectile penetrates an armoured vehicle - it spalls-off shards that self ignite and blow-up everything inside your tank. Even when 'depleted' - URANIUM is carcinogenic. 

'D-38' is U-238 Uranium that weights more than twice as much as steel ... has a half-life of nearly four and a half BILLION YEARS and is only a little radioactive, BUT it's dust - as in sparks - will cause you cancer.

And before you ask .. alternately it is possible to insert a length of ferrocerium rod into a grooved frizzen face and to replace the flint with a piece of carbon steel in the jaws - very bright sparks  I read ..

FLINTS for Flintlock Firearms:

- A wooden practice flint for a musket was known as a "SNAPPER".

Link to "Snapper" & friend talking guns on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diBKlfnTpfM

FLINT then is a hard glassy rock formed underground and under the sea 60-95 millions of years ago - thought to have started life as SPONGES - as some flint nodules have been found with bits of coral and vegetation inside. Clever eh.

- The "flint" used in Bic lighters and FERROCERIUM Firemaking Rods is factually Cerium MISCHMETALL or 'RARE EARTH MISCHMETALL'  - which itself is a bullshit name - as the so-called rare earths are as common as dirt eh. - The bloke who discovered/invented this stuff is Carl Auer von Welsbach .. another one of those Germans who invented and made everything that the English claim they did ..

Now - when you are looking to buy ferrocerium firelighter rod you need to have eyes up your back-door because some sellers call them "Magnesium Rods" which properly are something else entirely different - but confusion rules because the mischmetal does have a wee tiny bit of magnesium in it's rare earth mix.

Real FLINT has been useful since for ever - used for tool making, weapon making, fire lighting, - a building material etc. - Did you know they used to collect flint pebbles from the beach below the WHITE CLIFFS OF DOVER and ship it oop-North where they cooked it to 600 c with coal and milled it finely to powder in 'Flint Mills' - to add into porcelain clay mix for high quality translucent chinaware? 

.. Not many people know that.

I read that flint pebbles were also used in 'Ball Mills' for crushing and grinding materials.

Did they ever use ball mills to mix'n'mash GUNPOWDER? .. Wow - stuff does go in circles eh

Marty K.

P.S. If you are curious as to what is the difference between SILICA - SILICA GEL - SILICATES - SILICON - SILICONE - & SILOXANE .. Do your own research.